How Blogging is Developing My Style of Writing

August 12, 2008

Style of Writing
Image by Paul Worthington

In this post I’m going to describe how blogging has been slowly developing my style of writing. In no way does this post relate to any form of formal writing or formal writing styles.

So we’re going to skip all the rhetorical modes, all the connotation, the figures of thought, effective figurative language, avoiding cliches, and several other things and just focus on my experience of writing through blogging.

So before we start, you can throw all that out the window.

I’m growing to love writing everyday as a blogger. I remember back in my junior high school days I used to love writing, but hated writing with an actual pen and paper.

I was always one to include my opinion about everything around me in extreme detail; it wasn’t enough to say what I thought, I also had to say why I thought it.

I was always turning in extremely long essays that were about 2-3 pages longer than what the teacher asked for. It wasn’t that I was trying to impress the teacher with extra work, it actually took that many pages for me to express what I felt.

Why write in excess?

If I didn’t write down exactly what I thought I would feel my work was incomplete. The fact that I would write so much and felt I wasn’t done if I didn’t thoroughly explain myself, resulted in me getting hand cramps when writing that temporarily prevented me from finishing my work–hence me not liking to write with pen and paper.

And by the way, writing in excess is a good thing.

This want to be as thorough and clear as possible developed part of my writing style, which is identical to my style of speech.

I chose to be straightforward when I write for one simple reason: I’m a straight-forward type of person.

I could clutter my articles with humor and sarcasm, which I occasionally like to do, but that would distract you from the point I’m trying to get across. In other cases the humor and sarcasm actually help get the point across; if that’s the case I usually do so.

Traditional writing and the way you write in a blog should be different in my point of view. If you blog like you write a novel I think you would pretty much put everyone to sleep–I know I’d be out for the count. Why is that? Well, I like to think people who read blogs want a person to speak in more of a conversational style than a formal one.

Therefore, I write in a straight-forward, conversational sort of way–or at least I’d like to think so.

How did you know what writing style was right for you?

Well, personality for one can be the best way for you to determine what kind of writing style you should have.

But wait!

You can’t forget that you’re writing for your readers. Your readers are the reason you write. Therefore, you should be writing for them. What’s your type of audience? What does this type of audience like?

You should already know these things if you’ve already selected your blog’s niche.
And if you chose to blog about something you’re passionate about, then your personality should match right along with the type of writing style your blog’s audience will enjoy.

I chose the niche I’m in because the readers are straight-forward kind of people. This niche is so saturated that people are tired of the run-around. They just want good info; and once I knew that, I knew this was the perfect niche for me to develop my straight-forward kind of writing.

When you choose a writing style for a blog it’s good to stick to it. Outside of blogging your writing style should go according to what you’re writing about.

i.e., you wouldn’t write an article speaking about the dangers of nuclear war in the same tone you would write an article about your trip to Great Adventures.

But when it comes to blogging everything you write is most likely on a certain topic, so your audience is always the same. There isn’t a drastic change in audience like in the example above, so once you choose a writing style you should stick with it.

So how do you choose a writing style?

Once you know what topic you’re going to be covering you can now determine what voice you’re going to write in. Voices are extensions of people. Do you want to come off humorous, professional, sarcastic, or down to earth?

Again, this brings us back to personality. The best way to determine this is to write how you speak. If your personality in fact does match your niche’s audience, then writing how you speak would be a good way to start out.

But hey, there’s no rush!

A person will not establish a writing style until they have written enough to develop one. Sure, you can write all you want, but will the voice you thought you wrote your post in be the same voice your readers hear when they read it?

I’m yet to have a solid writing style; it’s in the making.

It’s all about bringing fun and a twist to the article. Sure, you can write a great, informative post that provides the reader with all the information they were looking for (which you should), but what would make you different from the other 56 websites that provide the same great content?

Nothing.

Nothing will make you different. You will be the same: another website providing useful information–big deal. But if you can provide that same useful information and write it in a way that’s fun, and not boring and monotonous, then readers would much rather come get the information on your site.

So getting a unique writing style that matches your blog’s audience is a great foundation for a blog. It will grow as part of the blog’s brand and the readers have something to look forward to they can’t find on any other blog, and that something is the way you write.

Take your time, write often, and try out different things and see what the response is like. In most cases just being yourself works out–unless you’re targeting niches you have no interest in just to make money from them, then you have to get a little creative.